Stories from RhyDin & The Rings

I'd like to propose that the 3 sports cease the recording of negative WoL rankings.

Essentially, the same commoner / glass / apprentice cleanup that gets done at the start of each new cycle, only instead of waiting 2-3 months to do it, it gets done on a weekly basis.

The rationale is this:
It is fairly common to make entry into a game easy. If you take MMORPG's as the example, most people can fly through the first few levels and will gain new abilities and all the fun stuff that goes along with gaining levels. It's essentially the hook. Keep the new folks engaged, don't make it too hard on them, and maybe they'll stick around for the long haul.

Our games tend to go in the exact opposite direction. As far as I can tell, we still don't even maintain publicly available copies of the matrix for any of the games here on the RoH site (and a true new comer isn't likely to know about Dueling Zone). So, instead of giving new comers the carrot of advancement, we repeatedly beat them with the stick. They hop into a game knowing nothing more than the names of the moves and we let them dig a hole so deep they're unlikely to get out of it until the following cycle brings a reset. If our rooms were full of newcomers and getting commoner vs. commoner (or insert lowest rank of sport here) was cake. that might be a different matter, but it isn't the case. Even then though I think I'd like to see this done.

Point is: Rather than giving them incentive to stay and try to advance, our rule sets take their inexperience and hold it against them for up to 3 months. This can hold true even for people bringing up a new character or trying a new sport. I know I've personally shelved a character that went 1-4 on a bad opening weekend of DoS rather than try to fight my way through it. Luckily it was the last month of the cycle, so I brought him back three weeks later to try again.

The Duels seem to be in a growth phase right now, or at least the numbers are better than they had been over the last few years. It would be cool to give some of the new faces a fighting chance and get them to hang around.

I had another idea or two in the same regard, but this one seems fairly low impact as well as being pretty easy to implement in terms of work load on the standings keepers.

It occurs to me that this should have gone up in the Player's Soapbox forum.. sorry about that. Any admin stumbling across this should feel free to move it at their own discretion.

Interesting concept, but what is the cutoff point for negative WoL?

Using myself as an example, these are my stats for the first six weeks of this cycle in Swords:

Week 1: 3- 3- 0

Week 2: 6- 9- 0

Week 3: 8- 12- 0

Week 4: 10- 14- 0

Week 5: 14- 16- 0

Week 6: 18- 16- 0

Where would my stats stop being recorded according to this system?

I personally want to know my wins and losses, so I can keep track of them.

I will admit that seeing a higher loss than win ratio (during one Swords cycle, I had a WoL ratio of 24 - 36 - 4 at one point) is very discouraging. I've almost quit dueling a few times in discouragement because I felt that I could never dig out of the hole I was in and achieve any kind of recognized rank. Ironically, during some of my worst stats times, I managed to win the Talon two times consecutively. What kept me going was the knowledge that each cycle things zeroed out and I could start over fresh.

A weekly reset is entirely too frequent. An important element in the learning curve is learning about losing, which with a weekly reset becomes meaningless at the bottom rank.

I think anyone that's willing to simply give up because the cyclic reset is too long isn't taking advantage of the options they have if they truly wish to compete and make rank in a sport. Obviously if you have negative WoL then the problem is losing more than you win. There are tactics and methods at hand to help one stem the tide of losses and dig out of a hole. Stick around late and get in practice duels, find someone OOC to help you strategize, stick to dueling your own rank for awhile, etc. Any veteran duelist should know this. Any true newcomer should learn this after a few cycles. It takes time to make rank.

The way things work currently is that if you are anywhere below 1-0 at the end of the cycle, you are removed from the standings and essentially reset to 0-0. What I'm suggesting is that we do this every time a new set of standings are posted instead of those 4-6 times a year. Maybe instead of clearing someone, you leave them on there are 0 - 0 instead, but it amounts to the same thing.

So, in your case, your progress would look like this:

Week 1 you go 3 - 3, so appear on the week 2 standings as 0 - 0
Week 2 you go 3 - 6, so appear on the week 3 standings as 0 - 0
Week 3 you go 2 - 3, so appear on the week 4 standings as 0 - 0
Week 4 you go 2 - 2, so appear on the week 5 standings as 0 - 0
Week 5 you go 4 - 2, so appear on the week 6 standings as 4 - 2, a swordswoman
Week 6 you go 4 - 0, so appear on the week 7 standings as 8 - 2, a master-at-arms

We're a PvP heavy game. Your speed of advancement is entirely up to YOU, the player. It has ntohing to do with mechanics or rules.

I had ??-30 WoL when I first started, then I got to talking with people like Farek, Vanion, Xenograg, and Topaz. They are who I base my dueling style off of. Farek told me..make a throw-away character and power duel. This'll help you learn the matrix and keep up to par, then take a week off, bring in the one you want advancing and pick someone you've dueled a lot. Then Xenograg told me duel once a week and make sure you win.

The upper ranks are there to help the lower ranks, but they won't do that if you don't speak up and say something or approach one of us.

Farek's advice is absolutely 100% true. That was one player who was STELLAR at teaching new people how to duel.

And, quite honestly, you need to find one of those people in order to get good. As Art's player says, many of us are willing to help. You just have to ask for the help.

It took me quite a few years of on and off dueling in order to get a warlord character and that was in the days when there was nothing for the lower ranks to do but show up on regular dueling nights.

There are so many fun ways for lower ranks to participate in the game that many of us didn't have. There's the squire title, all rank tournaments, the Overlord Grant, the Talon/Panther's Claw/Klytus Ring (???) tournaments.

I'm not for watering down the game anymore than it has over the past year. If we want to keep new people we give them reasons to want to stick around in the form of tournaments that they can participate in and great stories to get involved in.

I'm going to just echo Marc's comments. I most especially agree with the following:

I'm not for watering down the game anymore than it has over the past year. If we want to keep new people we give them reasons to want to stick around in the form of tournaments that they can participate in and great stories to get involved in.

Marc Franco wrote:There are so many fun ways for lower ranks to participate in the game that many of us didn't have. There's the squire title, all rank tournaments, the Overlord Grant, the Talon/Panther's Claw/Klytus Ring (???) tournaments.

This. Pre 2004 there was NOTHING. The lower ranks have so many options now across all three sports. DoM just had an All Ranks Tournament where the participants were allowed to keep their wins and have them added to their record. The DoS Madness is open to all ranks yearly. DoF had an all ranks Slugfest for Moonberyl a month or so ago. DoF has the mentoring system. So why are we STILL trying to make things so easy? How many bones do we have to throw people?

Harris wrote:

Marc Franco wrote:There are so many fun ways for lower ranks to participate in the game that many of us didn't have. There's the squire title, all rank tournaments, the Overlord Grant, the Talon/Panther's Claw/Klytus Ring (???) tournaments.

This. Pre 2004 there was NOTHING. The lower ranks have so many options now across all three sports. DoM just had an All Ranks Tournament where the participants were allowed to keep their wins and have them added to their record. The DoS Madness is open to all ranks yearly. DoF had an all ranks Slugfest for Moonberyl a month or so ago. DoF has the mentoring system. So why are we STILL trying to make things so easy? How many bones do we have to throw people?

People are lazy. Plain and simple. They want to get that 15 WoL the easy way. And Farek's advice is the best way to get that easy rise. Duel like mad under a throw-away without caring about record, bring in your main character and duel once a week. You'll haev the 15 WoL in record time. This is the only road map for the person who just wants the rank with a little RP on the side.

I'd love to focus more on wins than losses. It's very difficult for me to get out of the holes my various characters are in and it sucks each cycle to see them basically removed from the standings as if I didn't do anything. Especially when I can have a really great weekend and go something like 6-2 (a lot of duels in a week for me), but it doesn't matter because of the weeks prior where I was at 4-10.

It's very disheartening for me personally and takes a lot of enjoyment from my playtime.

I'll be honest with you all.

I'm disinclined to do away with negative wins over losses. May as well just start everyone at Warlord.

I agree totally with G. Overcoming those negative WoL records is a big part of the game, regardless of levels of participation. When something becomes easier to achieve, the satisfaction level for that achievement decreases in direct proportion, in my opinion.

Kalamere wrote:It occurs to me that this should have gone up in the Player's Soapbox forum.. sorry about that. Any admin stumbling across this should feel free to move it at their own discretion.

Moved as requested.

If recording losses are so important, then maybe they shouldn't be erased at all to truly reflect a duelist's career.